El Shaddai

This article is about the Judaic name of God. For other uses, see El Shaddai (disambiguation).

"God Almighty" redirects here. For other uses, see God Almighty (disambiguation).

El Shaddai (Hebrew: אל שדי‎, IPA: [el ʃaˈdːaj]) or just Shaddai is one of the names of the God of Israel. El Shaddai is conventionally translated as God Almighty but while the translation of El as "god" or "lord" in the Ugarit/Canaanite language is straightforward, the literal meaning of Shaddai is the subject of debate.

The name appears 48 times in the Bible, seven times as "El Shaddai" (five times in Genesis, once in Exodus, and once in Ezekiel). It has been conjectured that El Shaddai was therefore the "god of Shaddai".

The first occurrence of the name is in Genesis 17:1, "And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am El Shaddai; walk before me, and be thou perfect." Similarly, in Genesis 35:11 God says to Jacob, "I am El Shaddai: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins". According to Exodus 6:2–3, Shaddai was the name by which God was known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Shaddai thus being associated in tradition with Abraham, the inclusion of the Abraham stories into the Hebrew Bible may have brought the northern name with them, according to the Documentary hypothesis of the origins of the Hebrew Bible.

In the vision of Balaam recorded in the Book of Numbers 24:4 and 16, the vision comes from Shaddai along with El. In the fragmentary inscriptions at Deir Alla, though "Shaddai" is not, or not fully present, shaddayin appear (שדין, the vowels are uncertain, as is the gemination of the "d"), perhaps lesser figurations of Shaddai. These have been tentatively identified with the ŝedim (שדים) of Deuteronomy 32:17 and Psalm 106:37-38, who are Canaanite deities.

The name Shaddai (Hebrew: שַׁדַּי) is often used in parallel to El later in the Book of Job.

In the Septuagint Shaddai or El Shaddai was often translated just as "God" or "my God", and in at least one passage (Ezekiel 10:5) it is transliterated ("θεού σαδδαϊ"). In other places (such as Job 5:17) it is translated "Almighty" ("παντοκράτωρ"), and this word is used in other translations as well (such as the King James Bible).

Etymology of "Shaddai"

The origin and meaning of "Shaddai" are obscure, and a variety of hypotheses have been put forward.

Shaddai related to wilderness or mountains

According to Ernst Knauf, "El Shaddai" means "God of the Wilderness" and originally would not have had a doubled "d". He claims that it is a loan-word from "Israelite" Hebrew, where the word had a "sh", into "Judaen (and hence, Biblical) Hebrew", where it would have been "śaday" with the sound śin. In this theory, the word is related to the word "sadé" meaning "the (uncultivated) field", the area of hunting (as in the distinction between beasts of the field, חיות השדה, and cattle, בהמות). He points out that the name is found in Thamudic inscriptions (as 'lšdy), in a personal name Śaday`ammī used in Egypt from the Late Bronze Age till Achaemenid times, and even in the Punic name `bdšd' (Servant of Shadé or Shada).

Another theory is that Shaddai is a derivation of a Semitic stem that appears in the Akkadian shadû ("mountain") and shaddā`û or shaddû`a ("mountain-dweller"), one of the names of Amurru. This theory was popularized by W. F. Albright but was somewhat weakened when it was noticed that the doubling of the medial ‘d ’ is first documented only in the Neo-Assyrian period. However, the doubling in Hebrew might possibly be secondary. According to this theory, God is seen as inhabiting a holy mountain, a concept not unknown in ancient West Asian mythology (see El), and also evident in the Syriac Christian writings of Ephrem the Syrian, who places Eden on an inaccessible mountain-top.

The term "El Shaddai" may mean "god of the mountains," referring to the Mesopotamian divine mountain. According to Stephen L. Harris, the term was "one of the patriarchal names for the Mesopotamian tribal god", presumably meaning of the tribe of Abram, although there seems to be no evidence for this outside the Bible. In Exodus 6:3, El Shaddai is identified explicitly with the God of Abraham and with Yhwh. The term "El Shaddai" appears chiefly in Genesis. This could also refer to the Israelite camp's stay at Mount Sinai where the god gave Moses the Ten Commandments.

Shaddai meaning destroyer

The root word "shadad" (שדד) means to plunder, overpower, or make desolate. This would give Shaddai the meaning of "destroyer", representing one of the aspects of God, and in this context it is essentially an epithet. The meaning may go back to an original sense which was "to be strong" as in the Arabic "shadiid" (شديد) "strong", although normally the Arabic letter pronounced "sh" corresponds to the Hebrew letter sin, not to shin. The termination "ai", typically signifying the first person possessive plural, functions as a pluralis excellentiae like other titles for the Hebrew deity, Elohim ("gods") and Adonai ("my lords"). The possessive quality of the termination had lost its sense and become the lexical form of both Shaddai and Adonai, similar to how the connotation of the French word Monsieur changed from "my lord" to being an honorific title. There are a couple verses in the Bible where there seems to be word play with "Shadday" and this root meaning to destroy (the day of Yhwh will come as destruction from Shadday, כשד משדי יבוא, Is. 13:6 and Joel 1:15), but Knauf maintains that this is re-etymologization.

Shaddai meaning fertility

An alternative view proposed by Albright is that the name is connected to shadayim which means "pair of breasts" in Hebrew (from shad breast and ai-im, an ending signifying a dual noun. It may thus be connected to the notion of God’s fertility and blessings to humanity. In several instances it is connected with fruitfulness: "May God Almighty [El Shaddai] bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers…" (Gen. 28:3). "I am God Almighty [El Shaddai]: be fruitful and increase in number" (Gen. 35:11). "By the Almighty [Shaddai] who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb" (birkhōt shādayim wārāħam)(Gen. 49:25).

Harriet Lutzky has presented evidence that Shaddai was an attribute of a Semitic goddess, linking the epithet with Hebrew šad "breast" as "the one of the Breast", as Asherah at Ugarit is "the one of the Womb", although the word for breast does not double the "d".

Shaddai as a toponym

It has been speculated that the tell in Syria called Tell eth-Thadeyn ("tell of the two breasts") was called Shaddai in the Amorite language. There was a Bronze-Age city in the region called Tuttul, which means "two breasts" in the Sumerian language. It has been conjectured that El Shaddai was therefore the "God of Shaddai" and that the inclusion of the Abrahamic stories into the Hebrew Bible may have brought the northern name with them (see Documentary hypothesis).

Shaddai in the Midrash

There is a Midrashic interpretation as an acronym standing for "Guardian of the Doors of Israel" (Hebrew: שׁוֹמֶר דְלָתוֹת יִשְׂרָאֶל). This acronym is commonly found as carvings or writings on the mezuzah, which is placed on the doorposts of Jewish homes and other dwellings.

Yet another suggested meaning of "El Shaddai" is that it is composed of the Hebrew relative particle she- (Shin plus vowel segol followed by dagesh), or, as in this case, as sha- (Shin plus vowel patach followed by a dagesh). The noun containing the dagesh is the Hebrew word dai meaning "enough, sufficient, sufficiency". This is the same word used in the Passover Haggadah, Dayeinu, which means "It would have been enough for us." The song Dayeinu celebrates the various miracles God performed while liberating the Israelites from Egyptian servitude. The Talmud explains it this way, but says that "Shaddai" stands for "Mi she'Amar Dai L'olamo"—"He who said 'Enough' to His world." When he was forming the earth, he stopped the process at a certain point, withholding creation from reaching its full completion, and thus the name embodies God's power to stop creation.

"El Shaddai" may also be understood as an allusion to the singularity of deity, "El", as opposed to "Elohim" (plural), being sufficient or enough for the early patriarchs of Judaism. To this was later added the Mosaic conception of the tetragrammaton Yhwh, meaning a god who is sufficient in himself, that is, a self-determined eternal being qua being, for whom limited descriptive names cannot apply. This may have been the meaning the Hebrew phrase "ehyeh asher ehyeh" (which translates as "I will be that which I will be") and which is how the god describes himself to Moses in Exodus 3:13–15. This phrase can be applied to the tetragrammaton Yhwh, which can be understood as an anagram for the three states of being: past, present and future, conjoined with the conjunctive Hebrew letter vav.

There is early support for this interpretation, in that the Septuagint translates "Shadday" in several places as "ο ικανός", the Sufficient One (for example, Ruth 1:20, 21).

Biblical translations

The Septuagint and other early translations usually translate "El Shaddai" as "God Almighty." However in the Greek of the Septuagint translation of Psalm 91.1, "Shaddai" is translated as "the god of heaven."

"God Almighty" is the translation followed by most modern English translations of the Hebrew scriptures, including the popular New International Version and Good News Bible.

The translation team behind the New Jerusalem Bible (N.J.B.) however, maintains that the meaning is uncertain, and that translating "El Shaddai" as "Almighty God" is inaccurate. The N.J.B. leaves it untranslated as "Shaddai," and makes footnote suggestions that it should perhaps be understood as "God of the Mountain" from the Akkadian "shadu," or "God of the open wastes" from the Hebrew "sadeh" and the secondary meaning of the Akkadian word. The translation in the Concordant Old Testament is 'El Who-Suffices' (Genesis 17:1).

Use by Bunyan

God is referred to as "Shaddai" throughout the 1682 Christian allegorical novel, The Holy War by John Bunyan.

External links

• Jewish Encyclopedia: Names of God: Shaddai and 'Elyon